Demo Game: Early Religion (Isabella)

[budweiser]

The AIs will actively research a religion if they dont have one. So if you take one of the early ones, you have to spread it around or the other AIs will just tech to the ones that have not been founded yet and then use those.

I have more trouble spreading them around than I do founding them.

 

[mariogreymist]

 

[whats a navy]

The only time I ever find a religion is bulbing philosophy and getting Taoism or going Oracle CoL slingshot. I may actually go for one of the two purposefully if I am on a continent with no religion and two other AI.

 

[slobberinbear]

Which is precisely my point. Maybe you're missing an opportunity.

I have illustrated in round one that you can (on Emperor, anyway) have your cake and eat it too sometimes ... founding two religions and getting all the happiness/culture/diplo/etc. while STILL expanding or invading.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Which is precisely my point. Maybe you're missing an opportunity.

I have illustrated in round one that you can (on Emperor, anyway) have your cake and eat it too sometimes ... founding two religions and getting all the happiness/culture/diplo/etc. while STILL expanding or invading.

Except if you didn't get those religions, Willem would have as he did in my game, and you'd have wound up with them anyway .

 

[slobberinbear]

I hear you, but (a) that's not a given and (b) you don't get the religions as soon by taking/receiving them from another civ. As Civ IV has taught us, having a worker (for instance) now is better than having a worker later. Why is that logic different when it comes to religion, especially for a Spiritual civ?

By getting Hinduism and Judaism by turn 27 (with some lucky hut help), I had all the benefits of the religions from very early on. This is better than simply getting whatever faith spreads to each of your cities based on some random function.

I concede that I could have axe-rushed Willem sooner had I not gone for Judaism.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I hear you, but (a) that's not a given and (b) you don't get the religions as soon by taking/receiving them from another civ. As Civ IV has taught us, having a worker (for instance) now is better than having a worker later. Why is that logic different when it comes to religion, especially for a Spiritual civ?

Because the ROI from special tiles is much higher than that of early religion, and often it turns into a tradeoff.

Religion is only good for more than culture if you can safely run it, where it is a simple +1 in each city that has it. This is arguably weaker than a single luxury resource on the end and you don't control spread without meditation + monastery or an early move to OR. A 2nd can be obtained reasonably cheaply for spiritual, less cheaply for others.

It's a useful benefit, but one that is not usually a priority, which is why it's not favored as an opening strategy. Of course, our games already diverge in terms of strategy choice too, since I opted not to rush right away :/.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Here's my thesis:

(1) Early religion is not necessarily a bad move at higher difficulty levels
(2) A religion-focused strategy (whether cultural, diplomatic, or military) is feasible at higher difficulty levels.

It doesn't look to me as though you've managed to do that at all.

My feeling is that what you've really demonstrated is that deliberately handicapping yourself for 12 turns is "not necessarily a bad move".

I'm trying to find the right design for a test control. I think it looks like "take the same start position, and research Polytheism at 100% for 12 turns WITHOUT discovering it." From this point on, play normally, with the restriction that you may not complete the research of Poly until Hindu has been founded elsewhere. (For comparative purposes, you might want to discover Hindu on the very next turn - salt to taste.)

Which is similar in effect to "throw away 12 turns of research".

My point being two fold
1) I don't believe one can reasonably classify discarding your first 12 turns or research as a "not a bad move". It's clearly a bad move - although depending on your skill level it may not necessarily be fatal.

2) It's not clear to me that your demonstration above differs significantly from that of the test control. The religion game changes some of the flavor, perhaps, but the major milestones in the game are unchanged (discover copper, unleash the hammers).

If I'm right about the second point, then all you are really doing is demonstrating that, given a low enough handicap, a religious opening isn't necessarily fatal. So you can take a religious start if you prefer that flavor, knowing that you can recover afterwards. Nice, but not nearly as exciting as...

A) Here's a demonstration of how to use early religion to compensate for the 12 turn lag.
B) Here's how you recover if your initial sprint misses it's target religion.

 

[UWHabs]

Early religion > late religion.

But early BW > late BW too. And early pottery > late pottery. It all depends on the map.

Sure, if you start as Izzy, and your cap is next to a lake, and all your inland is forest and you have 4 fish/clams next to you, then go for the religion early. Bu if you have no commerce tile, and you have corn/wheat/pig in your BFC, then screw the religion.

 

[slobberinbear]

I'm not sure how we can quantify "compensation for the 12 turn lag," mainly because of how my game unfolded. Judaism (enabled via Polytheism and my lucky Masonry hut pop) spread to Ragnar. Was the shared religion sufficient to keep him off my back? Did the extra early happiness enable enough extra production to overcome not having BW 12 turns sooner?

I can say that I derived benefit from having an early religion. Was it "more" of a benefit than having BW (or some other tech) earlier? I'm not sure we can be that precise.

I just dispute the tired assertion that early religion is always a bad thing at higher difficulty. I acknowledge that it is risky ... which is why I attempted it under best-case conditions ... Isabella with a water tile.

Because I chose to axe-rush, the other benefits of religion (especially diplomacy with Willem) never were realized. I suppose I could restart the game and not rush Willem, and that would have provided a better test of sorts.

I agree that the "oops I missed the religion" discussion is relevant. My argument assumes that you get the religion, which of course is dicey.

 

[m4gill4]

I'd just like to materialize here momentarily and comment that this is a great and informative discussion you guys are having about this.

I tend to play "random" leaders, and if I draw Isabella or Saladin (or a few others) I will usually at least consider going for an early religion since that seems to be what they are geared towards in terms of traits and starting techs. It's really useful to get a better idea of the strengths and weaknesses of that opening.

I think VoU has some good points about the slow opening and questionable return, but I think there are a few benefits that haven't been mentioned and haven't come up (yet) in this demo game.

First, having an early religion is great if you are going for a cultural win. It lets you build the religious buildings quite early, which means their cultural output will double more quickly.

Second, I'm a big fan of the shrines. Missionaries to increase culture (instead of monuments) are nice because if you have a shrine they also help to pay for city upkeep. They're also nice because you can use a good production city to subsidize the initial culture for your new cities rather than whipping a monument or slow building one in a city with poor production.

Third, it puts you in more control of the diplo scene. If you want to be friends with someone, you can send them a missionary early on and thus do more to guarantee their loyalty for some time to come than you otherwise could. It's harder to do this with later religions when most other teams have already chosen sides.

Four, in terms of religious victory, an early religion will allow you more time to spread the religion before the AP is built so that you can conceivably win on the first non-AP president vote.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I just dispute the tired assertion that early religion is always a bad thing at higher difficulty. I acknowledge that it is risky ... which is why I attempted it under best-case conditions ... Isabella with a water tile.

The problem is that no matter what, it is a risk. The risk-adjusted returns on early religion are just too low on high difficulties to merit going that way. If founding a religion were a REALLY STRONG move or something, the risk might be worthwhile, but that's not how civ IV set it up.

 

[JammerUno]

TMITs game exemplifies why I dislike medieval warfare; it would have been faster to just tech to rifling/MT with a small empire and overrun the AI than that 1400 AD sword/cat war. Especially with the two double gold locations and the excellent GP-farm capital. Not to mention the marble and the Spanish UU, which was surely made with a map like this in mind.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

TMITs game exemplifies why I dislike medieval warfare; it would have been faster to just tech to rifling/MT with a small empire and overrun the AI than that 1400 AD sword/cat war. Especially with the two double gold locations and the excellent GP-farm capital. Not to mention the marble and the Spanish UU, which was surely made with a map like this in mind.

Believe me, if I felt secure holding off on war I'd have done it. However, willem was in danger of capping to ragnar if I didn't hit him first (ragnar already attacked him once before), and I had no guaranteed way to get ragnar to friendly before he hit me with a DoW.

Thus I was in a situation where diplo would not be 100% protection. I felt I could win an earlier war, and so I went for it. I did eventually win that war and the game, so it worked out. Might I have had a faster time if I waited for the UU or possibly even better, the UB with cannons? Yes. Might attempting that have handed me a DoW unprepared? Yeah, that could have happened too.

It's not like they were good trading partners before I capped them anyway. Using them for brokering helped me catch up later.

 

[Grashopa]

I'll play this and go religions as well. I've gone hinduism - judaism in one of the deity forum games So post your playthrough and I'll add mine once I've got the free time.

 

[Grashopa]

Heres a little teaser:

Spoiler :

 

[cain3456]

To OP: Why not start nw of your original position? You have access to fresh water, you're on a hill for added defense, and you still have access to the fish upon expansion.

 

[Grashopa]

I didn't have my old saves, but restarted this and got a ~1600 BC 4 religions in capital. I'd love to see someone play this out without going for a religion for comparison purposes.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I didn't have my old saves, but restarted this and got a ~1600 BC 4 religions in capital. I'd love to see someone play this out without going for a religion for comparison purposes.

Play the game out for a Cultural Victory (or start again and do so if you didn't like your City placement).

That'll be a comparable test of the usefulness of this strategy--if you can go for a Cultural Victory and if someone who doesn't found any of the three early Religions can do the same, then we can get a good feel for whether or not founding the early Religions yourself will be a major factor in a game like this one, where Continents play a role.

Really, that's what we seem to care about here--the early Religions. Later Religions are easy enough to get without sacrificing your economy in order to get them, particularly Confucianism and Taoism.

So, go for a Victory Condition where said Religions are most likely to matter--i.e. one where prioritizing early Cathedrals can actually add a lot of value to the early receipt of Religions within your empire.

 

[Grashopa]

Haha, I only go for domination. So someone give me a time to beat and I'll play the game.